Page 40 of Borrowed Pain
Inside, the diner smelled like bacon grease and burnt toast. Cracked vinyl booths with red upholstery lined the windows. The tabletop was faintly tacky, syrup and sugar ground into its seams.
I chose a booth near the back corner—close enough to the kitchen's noise to mask conversation. It gave me a view of both entrances with my back to a solid wall.
A server with bottle-blonde hair and tired eyes approached my table. "What can I get you, hon?"
"Coffee, black. And I'm expecting someone, so maybe hold off on food for a bit."
She poured me a fresh cup, flashing the kind of practiced smile that could make strangers feel like regulars.
I touched my chest briefly, feeling the transmitter's outline beneath my shirt. Somewhere across the street, Rowan was listening to every word. The knowledge was both comforting and unnerving.
"Testing," I murmured into my cup, letting the steam warm my face.
The tape tugged against my chest when I sipped, a ghost of Rowan's touch reminding me he was listening.
I activated my therapist radar, scanning the other patrons. The trucker at the counter kept checking his watch—probably calculating drive time versus mandatory rest periods. A woman in scrubs stirred sugar into her coffee.
The door chimed. A man entered, shoulders hunched—mid-fifties, with thinning hair that hadn't seen a barber in months.
He wore layers—flannel over thermal over cotton. A messenger bag hung across his chest, and he clutched it with both hands as he approached my booth.
It had to be Tobias Rook. The ghost made flesh.
"Dr. McCabe?" His voice barely rose above the clatter of dishes and conversation.
"That's me." I stood, extending my hand. His palm was damp with nervous sweat. "Dr. Rook, I presume."
He slid into the booth across from me, bag still pressed against his chest like a shield. Up close, I saw the toll of years in hiding written in the lines on his face. It was what terror looked like after it had time to settle deep inside.
"You came," he said.
"You said you had information about Iris Delacroix." I kept my voice low, still scanning the other customers.
"I have information about a lot of people. Too much information." His gaze darted toward the windows, then back to me. "Including information about you, Dr. McCabe. About the questions you were asking eighteen months ago."
The blood drained from my face. "What questions?"
Rook's fingers drummed against his messenger bag. "The calls you made to the state health department. Inquiries about Riverside's licensing status." His voice dropped even lower. "She told me you'd been persistent. Professional but persistent."
"She? Who told you?"
Rook leaned over the table, and I smelled something sour on his breath. "Someone who... someone who's been watching what's happening from the inside. She said you'd been asking the right questions, which made you dangerous to them. It also made you valuable to us."
Us. Who?
"Dr. Rook, I need you to be more specific. What exactly was I asking that she flagged?"
He opened the messenger bag with trembling hands, revealing a notebook with ragged, worn corners. The pages were dense with handwriting.
"Your client—Iris Delacroix. When you started investigating what happened to her, your inquiries triggered alerts in their monitoring system." He flipped through pages, revealing columns of numbers and dates. "They track anyone who asks too many questions about their facilities. But she... she's been tracking the trackers."
There it was again. "She?"
Rook pulled back. "My contact. Someone inside the system who's been documenting everything. She keeps the kind of records no one ever reads—compliance audits, inspection crosswalks, the paperwork meant to ensure protocols line up on paper."
Who would have access to surveillance data on therapists? Who could track inquiries to state agencies?
It had to be someone high enough in the research hierarchy to see patterns across facilities, someone with the credentialsto access confidential information. Dr. Celeste Harrow. She was the only prominent female researcher we'd identified in the network.
